Lloyd’s public life, 1660-85
William Lloyd, dubbed ‘Old Mysterio’ in Tory satire, because of his interest in interpreting biblical prophesies, is easily confused with his namesake and contemporary in the episcopate, the non-juror William Lloyd, successively bishop of Llandaff, Peterborough and Norwich, although politically the two men were poles apart.
Lloyd’s career flourished after the Restoration, though it is not quite clear why: he was a prebend in Ripon from 1660, royal chaplain in 1666, a vicar in Reading by 1666, a series of Welsh benefices from 1668. He may have been assisted by his marriage, on 3 Dec. 1668, to the daughter of a canon of Westminster, as well as by his friendship with his cousin Robert Morgan, bishop of Bangor. In April 1673, when Morgan was contemplating his own death, he recommended Lloyd as his successor at Bangor.
In 1677 Lloyd published a proposal to sow divisions among English Catholics by allowing them toleration if they renounced both the pope’s infallibility and deposing power.
Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the magistrate who died in suspicious circumstances in October 1678, was one of Lloyd’s parishioners and it was Lloyd who delivered the uncompromisingly anti-Catholic sermon at his funeral on 31 Oct. 1678. Believing that Godfrey had been murdered, he declared that ‘The innocent blood speaks and cries in the ears of God… it speaks and cries aloud to him for vengeance’. He pinned responsibility for his death firmly on the Jesuits.
St Asaph, 1680-92
In January 1679 Lloyd was entrusted by the Privy Council’s committee of examinations with questioning Miles Prance, whose evidence subsequently convicted Berry, Green and Hill of Godfrey’s murder.
On 21 Oct. 1680, Lloyd took his seat on the first day of the second Exclusion Parliament to begin a parliamentary career that spanned more than three decades. In his first session, he attended 62 per cent of sittings, was named to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions and to six select committees. Ordered to preach before the Lords on 5 Nov. 1680, his sermon defended his earlier advocacy of a scheme for a modified toleration of Catholicism, claiming that he had formulated his thoughts long before the Popish Plot demonstrated how far matters had degenerated into ‘such a dangerous crisis’.
Lloyd took up residence at St Asaph in May 1681. With North Wales dominated by politically powerful men such as George Jeffreys, later Baron Jeffreys, and Henry Somerset, 3rd marquess of Worcester (later duke of Beaufort), Lloyd spent the early years in the diocese concentrating largely (and intensively) on ecclesiastical affairs. Related to, or on friendly terms with many in the Welsh establishment, he instituted a reform programme which included the recovery of church patrimony and the dissemination of devotional texts in the Welsh language, holding weekly communion, and seeking to raise standards of everyday behaviour.
We have a great many more cure of souls than we have graduates in this country and most of the people understanding nothing but Welsh, we cannot supply the cures with any other but Welshmen. But yet of those whom I have ordained, the graduates have not been always the best scholars. I have more than once seen them shamefully outdone by men that never saw the university.Tanner 30, f. 124.
Despite close involvement in diocesan affairs, Lloyd retained a high profile in London. In June 1682 he was appointed as one of the councillors to review the Hyde-Emerton affair, a dispute arising from Danby’s attempt to secure a politically and financially advantageous marriage for his son (Peregrine Osborne, then styled Viscount Dunblane, later 2nd duke of Leeds) even though the prospective bride, Bridget Hyde, was already married. Lloyd was clearly unwilling to become too deeply involved in so contentious an affair. He seems to have been absent at a meeting of the court of delegates on 15 July called to judge the validity of Bridget Hyde’s first marriage. Although Danby, who wanted the first marriage overturned, was informed that Lloyd was ‘steady in his judgment’ of the affair on 20 July, it was apparent by October that he intended to abstain by refusing to attend to give sentence. Danby wrote scornfully that his excuse ‘that his obligations... kept him from coming to discharge a better conscience here, in keeping a woman from misery’ was transparently inadequate. In response Lloyd wrote a long and carefully reasoned letter insisting that he would not attend unless ordered to do so by the king and that although he had initially been willing to give a verdict in Danby’s favour he had since come to doubt Bridget Hyde’s testimony. Danby, imprisoned in the Tower, still had influence at court, and on 14 Nov. Lloyd learned from Edward Conway, earl of Conway, that the king commanded his attendance. Up until that point he had kept his doubts between himself and the Osbornes, but he now openly told Conway that ‘I cannot satisfy my judgment in delivering any opinion in this cause’.
In October 1682 he gave Sancroft the names of several persons who preached without orders in neighbouring dioceses, crowing that his own was ‘wholly clear from that sort of vermin’. The desire to avoid unwelcome publicity evident in his attitude to the Hyde-Emerton affair seems to have been reflected in his initial implementation of the policies of the ‘Tory reaction’ in his diocese. In December 1682 he asked Sancroft to secure the support of Jeffreys (whose nephew was high sheriff) and of Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, in order to suppress a conventicle in Wrexham – but insisted his part in the request be kept secret. What was not to be kept secret was his offer of the vicarage of Wrexham to Jeffreys’ brother. He wanted Sancroft to tell Jeffreys that Lloyd considered him ‘an excellent judge and particularly very zealous for the Church’.
Lloyd expected Sancroft to intervene in his diocesan dispute over the rectory of Llangollen by leaning on the judge ‘not for favour but for patience and attention’.
James II and the fate of the Church 1685-92
On 19 May 1685, Lloyd arrived at the House on the third day of James II’s new Parliament. He attended the session for 78 per cent of sittings, was named to the three sessional committees, and to three select committees, including the Bangor Cathedral bill in which, as a former dean of Bangor, he had a personal interest. On 18 Oct. 1685 Humphrey Lloyd, the ailing bishop of Bangor, sent his proxy to both the two William Lloyds. The proxy was eventually registered in favour of Lloyd of Norwich. Lloyd of St Asaph was in the House on 20 Nov. 1685 for the prorogation. By December, he was ‘mustering all the North Wales gentry’ to receive his friend the earl of Clarendon on the latter’s way to Ireland.
Lloyd’s role in the investigation of the Popish Plot exposed him to potential censure in the reign of James II. In a letter that can be dated by internal evidence to the second half of 1685, Samuel Parker, the future bishop of Oxford, maintained that
the plot had never come to anything without Godfrey’s murder, nor Godfrey’s murder without Prance’s evidence, nor Prance’s evidence without the bishop of St Asaph, who (like a good divine) with infinite pains reduced him back to his first perjury to save his life, after he had abjured it to save his soul.Tanner 31, ff. 166-74.
Lloyd, continued Parker, was now ‘president of a trimming cabal of London divines ... a leading man in all the episcopal consults’. By the spring of 1686 Sir Roger L’Estrange‡ was investigating the evidence for the Popish Plot, with a clear view to discrediting it. Lloyd found that conduct that had once enhanced his reputation now put him under a cloud. In April 1686 he told Sancroft that in reply to queries from L’Estrange,
I frankly told him concerning that gentleman’s death I am still of the same opinion that I was when I preached at his funeral. I confess I am not able to answer the arguments that I used then, nor I have not yet seen anything to alter my opinion, but the information of Oates, Bedloe and Prance which I could never reconcile with what I knew of that story. And their tales, when I durst not contradict, I did never countenance or encourage.Tanner 30, f. 24.
He was also concerned about a rumour alleged to be current amongst the Catholics in his diocese about his role in supporting Oates during his imprisonment. Sancroft replied that ‘those that love you here, have been lately much concern’d for you’ as there was a report that Lloyd had been summoned to London to answer questions following Prance’s retraction of his confession.
In an undated letter that presumably belongs to the reign of James II, Lloyd reported that one of his sermons damning Catholicism had clearly had an effect on at least ‘one face in the church’, alerting him to the existence of a spy in the congregation and the likelihood of a hostile report to the magistrate.
make bold to put you in mind of Dr Jeffreys, whom probably his brother would not be the first to propose to HM, but if he were proposed by my lord treasurer [Rochester] or some other that would do it at your Grace’s request, he would drive the nail home, and not only shut that door against such a one as we have reason to fear may come in that way, but secure as such a bishop will be a blessing to the Church.Tanner 30, f. 145.
Ward survived till January 1689, but the influence of the Jeffreys family was still worth cultivating. In January 1687 when the vicarage of Wrexham became available Lloyd told Sancroft that there were ‘near 20 Papists and many more other separatists in that parish’, and ‘because it is the place where my lord chancellor was born, whose good influence may do much in that parish I writ to his brother, Dr Jeffreys to advise me how to dispose of it’. That same month he told Sancroft that he was suffering from tinnitus.
The various lists compiled during 1687-8 make it clear that Lloyd opposed the religious policies of James II. He was unhappy, too, about the king’s most recent episcopal appointees including the unpopular Thomas Cartwright, bishop of Chester, ‘a man of very great brows’ who, Lloyd claimed, had a history of financial sharp practice.
Lloyd vehemently opposed the two Declarations of Indulgence and on 12 May 1688, when some of the bishops in London met at Lambeth and decided to refuse to read the second Declaration and to petition the king against doing so, it was also agreed ‘to get as many bishops to town as were within reach’, one of whom was Lloyd of St Asaph. Four days later he was in London and joining in discussions over strategy with his friend Clarendon and the other bishops before signing the Seven Bishops’ petition on 18 May 1688 and presenting it to the king, who, he told Clarendon (with whom he was staying) was ‘angry, and said he did not expect such a petition from them’.
Although there were reports that Lloyd was present during the September meetings between bishops and the king and that he signed the bishops’ ‘ten advices’ that were presented to the king on 3 Oct. 1688, it is unlikely that this is accurate; he is not named in the list of those summoned to meet the king (although his namesake, Lloyd of Norwich, was) and the entry for 7 Oct. in Clarendon’s diary specifically states that Lloyd ‘came to town last night’ and that he ‘was very well pleased he was not here, for he had no mind to go to the king’.
On 17 Dec. 1688, presumably exploiting his connections with the Dutch court, he was acting as an intermediary in order to arrange a time when the bishops might pay their duty to William of Orange, which they did the following day. Although he had assured Simon Patrick, the future bishop of Ely, and Thomas Tenison, later archbishop of Canterbury, that Sancroft agreed with this course of action and would go with them, in the event he did not.
On 22 Jan. 1689, he attended the House for the first day of the Convention. Present for 76 per cent of sittings, he was named to the committee for the journal. He was also added to the committee on simoniacal promotions. Despite his earlier enthusiasm for ‘cession’, on the 29th he voted for the regency. On 22 Jan. Lloyd had been charged with preaching before the Lords on the day appointed for thanksgiving for the recent events. He was, though, reported to be ill on 31 Jan., perhaps a convenient illness, given the intervening and following debates: he was not present for the votes that afternoon on the vacancy of the throne.
In July 1689 it was rumoured that Lloyd would be translated to Worcester to replace the recently deceased William Thomas, but that post went instead to Stillingfleet.
Lloyd resumed his seat in the House a few days later, on the third day after Parliament resumed for the second session of the Convention, and attended 47 per cent of sittings. Preaching at Whitehall on 5 Nov. 1689 (and taking the opportunity to establish that the occasion was now a double anniversary in the Protestant calendar), Lloyd’s career was once more in the ascendant.
In February 1690, after the dissolution of the Convention and the summons of a new Parliament, Lloyd wrote that although it was important to have ‘good men’ chosen for Convocation, he was far more concerned in the choice of ‘good Parliament men... if they are such as love the Church and will be firm to the government, there is now a door open to them’; he commended Dean Humphrey Prideaux on the political progress to such an end in Norfolk and sent news of the imminent poll in Westminster.
On 20 Mar. 1690 he attended on the first day of the new Parliament and thereafter was present for 76 per cent of sittings during the March to May session. On 8 Apr., when the Lords gave a third reading to the bill for recognizing the king and queen and for confirming the acts of the Convention, Lloyd was one of 17 members of the House (six of them bishops) to enter a protest on the wording of the last clause (a compromise deal had altered the original design which had been designed to expose the Tories to charges of disloyalty). Two days later he protested against the resolution to expunge from the Journals the reasons for that protest, on the grounds that to do so contravened privilege of peerage and led to a misrepresentation of their motives.
Shortly before the beginning of the second session of the 1690 Parliament, on 1 Oct., he received the proxy of his old colleague from Bangor, Humphrey Humphreys, vacated at the end of the session. The next day he attended for the start of business and thereafter was present for 67 per cent of sittings. He was named to the three sessional committees and to the committee on a land exchange in Lincolnshire involving Philip Hildeyard. On 6 Nov. he voted against the discharge of James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury, and Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower, with Carmarthen adding that he ‘is already converted’.
In January 1691 following revelations of Francis Turner’s involvement in a Jacobite plot and of his assurances to the exiled king of the bishops’ support, the pressure to fill the vacant bishoprics intensified, with Lloyd, Compton, Nottingham and Carmarthen said to be at the forefront of the demands to do so. The king refused to act, still anxious to come to some accommodation with the non-jurors but in April Lloyd told Sancroft that the vacancies were at last to be filled. In May Lloyd tried, unsuccessfully, to get Sancroft to vacate Lambeth Palace so that John Tillotson could take possession; he also assisted at Tillotson’s consecration.
Lichfield and Coventry 1692-99
Thomas Wood, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, died in April 1692. In July a congé d’élire was issued for Lloyd’s translation to Lichfield.
On 4 Nov. 1692, the first day of the new parliamentary session, Lloyd took his seat in the House as bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. He attended 62 per cent of sittings and was named to the sessional committees for petitions and privileges. On 21 Nov. 1692 he received Stillingfleet’s proxy, which was vacated at the end of the session, using it when voting on 31 Dec. against committing the place bill. On 2 Jan. 1693 he may have voted to read the divorce bill for Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk. The following day he again used Stillingfleet’s proxy to support the court by opposing the passage of the place bill. That month the pamphlet King William and Queen Mary Conquerors re-ignited the contentious debate over the nature of William’s right to be king, and Bishop Burnet’s Pastoral Letter raised similar issues; after the Commons voted to have both burnt, Goodwin Wharton‡ made an unsuccessful attempt to have Lloyd’s Discourse of God’s ways of Disposing of Kingdoms subjected to the same treatment.
In his visitation of his new diocese over the summer of 1693 Lloyd gave indications of his flexibility over ceremony, allowing public baptisms without the sign of the cross or the presence of godparents, as Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford, learned.
On 11 Oct., Parliament was dissolved, triggering parliamentary elections. Lloyd’s attempt the previous July to nominate the Lichfield senior bailiff, who was also its returning officer, may have been intended to enhance his control of the election there, but it was blocked by the corporation and Lloyd was forced to back down. In the event, the parliamentary election on 7 Nov. 1695 saw the return of the Whig Sir Michael Biddulph‡ and the Tory Robert Burdett‡; the extent to which Lloyd was involved in the choice of candidates in unknown.
Lloyd attended the House on 22 Nov. 1695 for the first day of the new Parliament and attended 42 per cent of sittings. In spring 1696, he was known to be an opponent of the bill for altering the act abrogating the oath of supremacy in Ireland. The bill did not become law.
Lloyd was absent at the beginning of the next session in October 1696, having sent his proxy directly to Tenison.
In 1697 Lloyd refused to ordain Henry Sacheverell, ostensibly for his poor Latin but possibly because Sacheverell was already identified with the more extreme Tories (though Sacheverell was successful on a second application).
Whether Lloyd intervened in the elections after the dissolution of 7 July 1698 is unclear although the election at Lichfield was controverted and the unsuccessful candidate, Humphrey Wyrley, complained of Tory intimidation.
Bishop of Worcester 1699-1717
Remaining in London, Lloyd was in the House on 1 June and 13 July 1699 for further prorogations. Over the summer he participated in the hearings at Lambeth of the case against Thomas Watson, the Tory bishop of St Davids, helping to find Watson guilty of simony and extortion.
Parliament was dissolved in December 1700, allowing Lloyd full rein for his electioneering activities. Lloyd’s translation, the succession of the whiggish Thomas Coventry, 2nd earl of Coventry, and the absence abroad of Shrewsbury, prevented a gentry meeting to ensure an uncontested election for the county.
On 10 Feb. 1701 Lloyd arrived at the House on the fifth day of the new Parliament. He attended the session for 72 per cent of sittings and was named to the committee for the Journal but there is no further evidence about his activities in the House. His dislike of Pakington could only have been increased by that Member’s introduction of a bill in the Commons in the spring of 1701 to prevent the translation of bishops. He attended on 24 June 1701 for the prorogation and went back to his diocese where Worcestershire Whigs were adding their voice to the campaign for another general election in the hope of securing a Commons more in tune with the king’s foreign policy.
Lloyd, back in London by Christmas 1701, joined Charles Sackville, 6th earl of Dorset, and Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, to ‘treat’ the imperial and Venetian ambassadors.
In the summer of 1702, in the third set of elections since the beginning of 1701, Lloyd took up again his feud with Pakington. In August 1702, he identified Pakington as the author of the libels against the bishops circulated before the previous election and
I therefore sent him word that I thought myself obliged to do what I could to oppose his election and therefore to avoid this I begged of him not to stand but to transfer his votes to whom he would. This I did three times before I began to make any opposition. On his last denial being then to go my triennial visitation I did what I thought I lawfully could to engage the clergy against his election. And I have engaged as many as I can of the bishop’s tenants. The meanwhile there is come out a third libel which is against myself in particular for opposing the election of Sir John Pakington.Worcs. RO, Lloyd pprs, 970.5:523/71.
A contemporary Tory account accused Lloyd of using his visitation to deliver ‘long harangues as formidable as he could’ against Pakington and when ‘his rhetoric and artificial insinuations could not prevail he then urged their canonical obedience... closeting of them, using all means imaginable to persuade or deter them from voting’ for Pakington. It was even said that Lloyd had refused institution and induction to some ‘unless the party would vote as ordered’.
Lloyd arrived in London on 17 Oct. 1702, six days before the opening of the new Parliament.
That the proceedings of William, lord bishop of Worcester, his son, and his agents, in order to the hindering the election of a Member for the county of Worcester, has been malicious, unchristian, and arbitrary, in high violation of the liberties and privileges of the Commons of England.
They also requested that the queen dismiss him as lord almoner and ordered the prosecution of Lloyd’s son after the lapsing of his privilege as a sitting member of Convocation.
The House of Lords came to Lloyd’s defence. On 19 Nov. 1702, Lloyd was present when three Whig peers (Charles Boyle, 2nd earl of Burlington, Mohun and Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron Wharton) secured a debate on the Commons resolutions and an address to the queen to maintain Lloyd in post until ‘some crime shall be legally proved against him’. Nottingham maintained that this would be to constrain the royal prerogative, but he was overruled.
Lloyd resumed his seat on 23 Nov., by which time he had been dismissed from the post of almoner and the occasional conformity bill had been revived in the Commons. Two days later the Commons ordered that Lloyd’s offending letters be printed. Business in the Lords was dominated by discussion of the instructions given to James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, concerning the attack on Cadiz and nothing further was done on Lloyd’s matter. The occasional conformity bill arrived in the Lords on 2 Dec., and on the next day, Lloyd voted for Somers’ wrecking amendment to the bill together with Tenison and nine other Whig bishops.
After the prorogation at the end of February 1703, Lloyd left London for Oxford, where he remained for several months, interspersed by journeys to Bath and to various friends.
Meanwhile Lloyd worried that his dismissal from the post of almoner meant that he was under the queen’s displeasure and had to be reassured by John Sharp that ‘she seems on the contrary to have a kindness and respect for you’.
I forbear to mention many vexatious and unneighbourly proceedings against your own tenants. But your lordship must give me leave to tell you once more, that this way of acting neither consists with Christian charity in respect of yourself, nor with the liberty of a free Parliament in respect to the votes; it being contrary to the constitution, that threats or any compulsive methods should be made use of to gain or hinder any elector from voting for whom he pleases. I have nothing more to add but to assure your lordship that it lies wholly in your power to put an end to these disputes by ceasing to persecute my friends; but if your lordship does not I must with great regret endeavour again to right myself and them.Hearne’s Colls. i. 125-6.
During the summer of 1705, Lloyd conducted his visitation.
Lloyd did not attend the 1706-7 session of Parliament until 24 Jan. 1707. Thereafter he attended for only 15 per cent of its sittings. Nevertheless, Lloyd was in touch with the Whig managers in the Lords since on 21 Jan. 1707 John Hall, bishop of Bristol, wrote to tell Somers that he had not previously sent a proxy but had been told by Lloyd the previous Saturday that he needed to send it ‘speedily upon account of some motion made in the House by the earl of Nottingham’. The issue concerned, discussed over dinner at Lambeth on 25 Jan., was Tenison’s bill of security for the Church.
Lloyd attended for only one day, 8 Oct. 1707 of the 1707-8 session of Parliament. Despite the previous year’s apparent cessation of hostilities, his battle with Pakington was far from over. The death of William Bromley, Pakington’s partner in Worcestershire, had seen Lloyd behind an electoral pact (proposed on his behalf by Anthony Lechmere‡) which would avoid a by-election and delay the poll until the general election due to be held in summer 1708 under the terms of the Triennial Act. The pact was to ensure the shire representation was shared between the Tory Samuel Pytts‡ and the Whig Sir Thomas Cookes Winford‡, on the assumption that Pakington would stand down in the interests of county harmony. (Lloyd had been a frequent visitor to Winford’s uncle, Sir Thomas Cookes, and had been instrumental in persuading him to leave his money to found a new Oxford college, Worcester, before his death in 1702.) When Lloyd’s involvement in the scheme became public knowledge, however, the plan collapsed.
Parliament was dissolved in April 1708 and Lloyd went to Worcester for the general election and for his visitation.
Lloyd did not attend the 1709-10 session either and was thus absent throughout the Sacheverell debates and trial. His distaste for Sacheverell was nevertheless clear. He described the reception received by Sacheverell on his progress from Oxford towards Wales as ‘a very high affront to the highest court of judicature in this kingdom and such as ought not to be suffer’d by any that are in government ecclesiastical or civil’. He ordered the clergy and church wardens in his diocese not to ring bells ‘upon any occasion whatsoever’ during Sacheverell’s triumphal return to London.
so ridiculous, it must be attributed to the old gentleman’s infirmities, as well as to the inveterate prejudice of his hot importunate son… We have very little ringing of bells in any part of the diocese where he and his son come, and that may be the reason why they envy’d Dr Sacheverell this small compliment.A Letter from a Citizen of Worcester to his Friend in London (1710), 1.
In the elections that followed the dissolution on 21 Sept. 1710, Lloyd was involved not only in Worcestershire but also in his former diocese. On 9 Oct., he told Wake that he had persuaded William Walmisley to stand again for Lichfield, ‘the only man I know will do her majesty or the Church of England faithful service’. Since ‘we must not lose a vote that we can gain for him, nor suffer any other to come that we can keep away’ he also asked for Wake’s assistance in preventing the Tory chancellor of Lincoln from exercising his vote in the city. He was nevertheless confident ‘that God will take care of his Church, even in this sinful nation; and will not suffer it to be destroyed by them that have so long cried it was in danger and now at last done w[ha]t they could to bring it to be so’.
Lloyd was listed, naturally, by Harley in October 1710 as an opponent of the new Tory ministry. He did not attend the first (1710-11) session of the new Parliament, but remained politically active locally. In April 1711 when a cleric who had entertained Sacheverell on his progress was invited to give the assize sermon, Lloyd and William Talbot prevented him from doing so; the sheriff of the county ostentatiously boycotted the sermon given by their replacement candidate.
which indeed was on my part very unwillingly, for I would gladly have shown him those things which he might have shown your lordship at his coming to London. They were such as I believed might have stopped that speed with which your lordship is said to be advancing in this negotiation.Add. 70028, f. 321.
Lloyd attended the session on two days only (5 and 6 June 1712) almost certainly for consideration of the bill ‘for enlarging the time for the ministers in Scotland to take the abjuration oath’ and for the queen’s speech on the peace negotiations. Lloyd never returned to the Lords. On 7 June 1712 he registered his proxy in favour of John Moore (vacated at the end of the session). Two accounts suggest that he visited the queen in order to dissuade her from the peace because of the inevitability of a war of religion. According to one account this was early in June, and the queen answered ‘let us then have peace in the meantime that we may be the better able to engage in a new war’. Whilst it is possible to interpret this remark in a kindly light, it seems likely that when Lloyd was invited to a second interview at the end of June in order to debate the issue with Oxford, the purpose was to make fun of the old man.
the old bishop of Worcester, who pretends to be a prophet, went to the queen by appointment, to prove to her majesty, out of Daniel and the Revelation, that four years hence there would be a war of religion; that the king of France would be a Protestant, and fight on their side; that the popedom would be destroyed, &c.; and declared that he would be content to give up his bishopric if it were not true. Lord treasurer [Oxford], who told it me, was by, and some others; and I am told lord treasurer confounded him sadly in his own learning, which made the old fool very quarrelsome.Jnl. to Stella ed. Williams, ii. 544.
Apocalyptic visions of the destruction of popery apart, Lloyd’s political sensibilities were constantly offended by the new government. When Simon Harcourt, Baron (later Viscount) Harcourt, pressed for Sacheverell’s elevation, Lloyd is said to have claimed that ‘thoughts of death are nothing near so terrible’ as the possibility of Sacheverell succeeding him in the episcopate.
Despite Lloyd’s absence from the House, he was listed by Oxford as a certain opponent of the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. In the elections of August 1713, Lloyd, unable to let a general election pass without an attempt to unseat the Tories, was foiled by an electorate satisfied with what the Tory, Pytts, described as ‘the good things... lately done for the public’.
Given fresh heart by the accession of George I and prospect of a general election, Lloyd resumed his electoral crusade against Pakington, who nevertheless came top of the poll, although in a partial triumph for Lloyd, Pytts lost his seat. News of the Jacobite rebellion led Lloyd to circulate a printed letter to his clergy together with the declaration of Tenison and the other bishops gathered in London, exhorting them to read both from the pulpit during divine service and to ‘endeavour by example as well as doctrine, to instruct your people in the duty they owe to our most gracious sovereign King George’.
In the autumn of 1716 he again sought assistance in carrying out ordinations. He took the opportunity to secure further advancement for his son (and chancellor), pointing out to Wake that,
all other parts of my episcopal office are duly discharged for me by my chancellor, who is perfectly well acquainted with all the concerns both spiritual & temporal of this bishopric; and who might also make me easy in these respects, if I could prevail to have him consecrated as a coadjutor or suffragan to me... and entirely submit to your great wisdom, whether I shall take any further step towards it.
Still vengeful against Pakington, he refused a request for a faculty from Pakington’s domestic chaplain who, Lloyd maintained, had given ‘false evidence’ before the Commons in 1702 and been rewarded for it with Pakington’s gift of the rectory of Hampton Lovett.
On 26 Jan. 1717 Lloyd was taken ill, prompting Edward Chandler†, the future bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, to lobby hard for the expected vacancy at Lichfield, consequent on the translation of Hough to replace Lloyd at Worcester.